Indefinite Confinement
by iamsolarflare
Summary: An ancient afrit trapped in a modern video game. A spunky young lady with a few absolutely insane ideas. Also, I'm narrating. My latest summoner, well, she's rather crazy; we're going after a famous Minecraft creepypasta that I happen to know is an astoundingly dangerous spirit from the Other Place. Why? I don't know, I'm just along for the ride. And trust me, it's a wild one.
1. Creative chapter titles aren't my thing

Bartimaeus here, apologizing for the unfortunate lack of footnotes (It seems this site doesn't support them for some reason). I've been told that this tale might be necessary for, well, reasons my most recent master wouldn't say. In fact, all she (yes, yes, it's actually a girl this time and the full tale _will _be told) did say was that I can probably piece together everything by myself, and that she's using this site to fob off a true tale as fiction. Which makes sense.

Yes, yes, I'm getting to it, cool your jets Author (that's what I'm allowed to call her, surprise surprise).

Er. Where would I start? The summons?

* * *

The summoner was maybe fourteen, with a slightly lazy smile on her face. Average height, blueish eyes, brown hair, freckles, boyish face, humming and tapping a pencil against her leg. American, too.

You know the type, the pretty nerd (_I _happen to know that they're possibly the most dangerous masters).

I used Ptolemy's form, partly out of habit and partly because I might be able to annoy her out of the circle.

The girl wasn't fazed. At all. In fact, the only thing she said was "First order: Stay looking exactly like that for the rest of my commands."

Well, that smashed my plan to go naked and scare her. Pity, that.

I looked down at the pentacle. It was a standard Adelbrand's, but with some extra markings around the outside. I had no idea what they meant, and I was fairly sure I _didn't _want to find out.

"Come on, do you even _know who I am!?_" I bellowed in a demony (low, deep, resounding, lots of echoes, and very sinister) voice that, well, one would not expect to hear coming from a guy like Ptolemy.

The girl rolled her eyes. "Hm, let's see. I summoned you out of all the other demons in the world, tailored two pentacles specifically to my mission's needs for the two of us, and am now speaking to you like an ordinary human being, which likely annoys you a bit. Hi, Bartimaeus."

She had my number all right. But the extra lines thing, that confused me. It's standard form to use different pentacles on demons, but you're not supposed to use them on yourself. It'd be a bit like trying out an unbreakable cage on yourself and a prisoner at the same time (that is to say, over the top, weird, and likely to get you in trouble if nobody else was around).

"So what's the story with the lines then?" I asked, dropping the demony voice (I mean, I was actually more curious than anything now).

"You'll figure it out. Second order: What do you know about an afrit by the name of Herobrine?"

Now _that _was a name I hadn't heard in a while. In fact, I hadn't even run into him (in both the Other Place _and _Earth) for a long time running.

"Oh, you do _not _want to summon him. He's got a nasty temper, a mean streak, unusual deftness with lightning, and a talent for misinterpreting orders." I responded. All of this was true, quite obviously.

"I hadn't planned on it. Third order: Tell me what you know about Minecraft."

Now _that _was a tough one, and more importantly really weird. This girl obviously knew what Minecraft was, there was a foam "iron sword" from the game on her bookshelf (which, interestingly enough, held the first volume of yours truly's adventures).

But orders were orders.

"Um, Minecraft. Sandbox video game originally developed for the computer. Creator goes by Notch. Default player avatar name is Steve with a question mark at the end. Basic unit of the game is the block, which would be a 3 foot by 3 foot cube in real life." I took a deep breath to continue, but the girl cut me off.

"Okay, and the legends surrounding the game?"

I responded without thinking. "Well, there's this one story about a guy named Herobrine that stalks the player and- oh. Ohhhh. No way. Nope. Sorry. Find another demon. I am _not _doing anything to do with him. Pick another guy, ever heard of Farqarl? Yeah, pick him."

The girl smiled slightly. "I take it the dots are sufficiently connected? Fourth order: Tell me what you think the plan is."

Oddly nice of her to give me that chance.

"Well, Herobrine must have got trapped in Minecraft somehow, I'm guessing Indefinite Confinement, and _you _want to stop him in the game, bring him out, and then send him back to the Other Place. You invented a brand new type of pentacle to do so, and are going into the game with nothing but a pencil, notebook, and me. All of which begs the question: _are you mentally insane!?_"

"Possibly. I'm also an author."

"An author by the name of...?" Hey, it was worth a try. If I could get this girl's name, maybe I could refuse these crazy orders and do something more minor for her. Like, say, get her a new video game. I wasn't picky, I just didn't want to do this.

She grinned. "Yeah, not happening. Just call me Author."

Well, that shot my chances.

Author cocked her head to the side and smiled warmly. "Ready to go?"

"Nope. Not now and not ever and...I don't have a choice, do I?"

Freaking magicians and their pentacles. This was possibly the most insane thing I'd ever done in my life (and remember, I worked with Nathaniel, Ptolemy, _and _Solomon).

"No. Fifth order: Take us into Minecraft."

* * *

Thing about Minecraft? It's actually quite gorgeous if you're going to pay attention to the scenery, especially if you've been actually sucked into the game. Normally everything would appear as blocks, but to undo that Indefinite Confinement spell, we were basically in the _idea _of Minecraft instead. So no blocks or anything of that kind. Honestly, it reminded me of the Other Place in a majorly more ordered way. It even felt pretty nice - I couldn't really feel the summoning pain. It was still there, mind you, but I could barely feel it.

Herobrine had got lucky, if you asked me. Compared to that dreadful tiny tin of rosemary Nathaniel would've put me in, our target was _rolling in it_.

I tapped Author on the shoulder. "Not going to bother with the usual 'here's how you're not allowed to hurt me' commands, then?"

She shrugged. "I have other defenses. Namely, the fact that only _I _know how to get us out of here."

I grumbled under my breath. For those of you wondering _what_ I grumbled, the answer is "something profane".

She grinned at me. "Now start punching trees." With a wave of her hand, she turned and unleashed a few fierce karate moves on a tree trunk, causing a chunk of it to pop out and form as a tiny block in her hand. She threw the chunk into the air, where it hovered weirdly, and I sat down to watch as she grabbed four planks from the block, then pulled a table-type object away from them and set it down.

"Well, what are you looking at? Please get back to work, Barty." I winced at the added jab to my name, then turned to my tree, grew a few tentacles, slashed it to pieces, and dusted off my hands.

"What work? That was the entire tree. Look, I'll do yours too-" _SHKUNK_ "-See? Done. Let's start crafting."

She rolled her eyes, turned the tree trunks into wood planks, turned some of the planks into sticks, then held up a brand-new axe and got to work on another tree. I turned back to my side of the forest and began slashing trees.

I was really getting into the whole forest-killing rhythm when Author tapped me on the shoulder with a stick.

"Hey Forrest Stump, time to start building a house pronto. It's getting dark."

I ignored the new nickname and tried the whole wood-block-into-wood-planks thing, and it worked pretty well. In no time at all, I had enough wood to build a mansion. I mentioned this to my new master, but she shook her head impatiently.

"No mansions; monsters will spawn inside it and then I'm dead and you're, as I mentioned before, stuck in Minecraft forever.. Something simple and fairly small will do. Five by five wood room."

I obliged and made the room, then blinked as she carved something out of the wall.

"Wait a second, stop, what are you doing? It was perfect as i- oh, a door. Right."

She pointed up to the sky. "We need a roof too, bud. Get to it."

I grumbled and fixed the roof. "Does that suit her highness - _OKAY, WHAT WAS THAT!?"_

There was a moaning noise and I turned to find several grey rotting things banging on the door of our house. "Author. _Author. _There are _zombies _outside_."_

"Of course there are." She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Grab a sword, buddy. If they get in, we've gotta kill them." She tossed me what was essentially a glorified wooden stake, and I sighed back.

"We'll be lucky if we even make it to daybreak."

The door broke and I began hacking apart zombies like there was no tomorrow, frantically protecting - yes, _protecting _- Author.

A green thing came up to me and hissed. I can speak Snake (even though I'm rather rusty), and it sounded like it had said "Hi there, I'm sorry, I have to kill you." Funnily enough, that's around when it exploded.

My new master said a word synonymous with "feces" typical but unbecoming for her age. "[Aforementioned word], creepers. Fix the wall and ground, and this time don't leave a door."

I obliged as quickly as I possibly could, smashing away zombies, stray arrows, and hissing creepers like a maniac, then laying down the wall at ultraspeed. It took me a minute at the most.

Did I say Minecraft was pretty and good-looking? Well, I take it back. it was a small margin, but I think I probably would've preferred the tin of rosemary.

Probably.

* * *

Morning eventually came, and when it did I was about as ready for it as any demon could _ever_ be. Neither of us had been able to sleep that night, since we were too busy being kept awake by creepers hissing, zombies moaning, and sounds that resembled bones clacking and giant spider mandibles.

"You may exit first," she said with a smile that I _really_ didn't like. I found out why when I left the house - there were still creepers outside, _and _giant spiders.

"Nope!" I slammed the door. "Let's do something else, please. Anything else."

She held up two pairs of glorified wooden stakes that looked a tiny bit like scythes. "Up for some mining, o Mobslayer?"

"How many ironic nicknames do you _have_!?"

She shrugged. "Probably a lot. Now come on, we're going mining."

Author tossed the pickaxe (at least, I _think_ that's what it was supposed to be) in her left hand at me, then dug up some dirt from the ground and gestured at the stone underneath.

"Remember, don't dig straight down or straight up. If you hear any noises that sound even faintly like lava, move away from them and proceed with caution in general. Any questions?"

"Yeah, I do have one. Why aren't we going after Herobrine?"

"We _are._ I want _him _to come to _us_."

I gulped for what seemed like the hundredth time. "You realize he's incredibly powerful, right?"

All I got was another shrug. "This _is_ Minecraft, Captain Obvious. There's only so much you can do within the confines of the game. Now dig."

You can probably guess what I did next.


	2. Let's call this one Cave Noise

After I'd collected a fair amount of stone and a black material that was probably coal, I turned around only to find that Author was no longer mining with me. I figured I should drop off my load of coal someplace, so I walked back up the stone stairs of our makeshift mineshaft.

When I got back into our house, Author was sitting on the ground, writing something into her notebook. Unfortunately for me, she was in the corner, which meant I couldn't read it at all.

"Heya, Coal Digger," she said without looking up.

I blinked. "How'd you know I was here?"

She yawned. "The grass in here made a crunchy sound effect. But never mind that, did you get coal?"

I nodded. "Yeah, some."

She closed her book and held out her hand impatiently. "Well, give it here then."

Author took the coal, then threw some planks in the air, turned them into sticks with a wave of her hand, then took the sticks, threw some coal on top of them, and grabbed torches,

"Go and light that mineshaft with these, okay."

I took one, dubiously. "These aren't lit."

She shrugged. "They don't need to be. Watch." With that, she took a torch and slapped it against the wall. Instantly, it caught fire and began lighting up the entire room.

"Isn't that a fire hazard?"

She snorted. "In Minecraft, the only fire hazards are lava and actual fire." With that, she went back to writing in her journal.

Myself, I slunk back down into the mineshaft to light it up.

* * *

When I'd finished lighting the mineshaft, I walked back upstairs to find that there was a door in the house and that Author was gone. As I prepared to slink back into the mine, though, the oak door slammed open and my summoner came running in.

I frowned. "Why were you running?"

"Because it's faster than walking. Also, the sun's going down."

"Where were you?"

"Exploring a dungeon sticking out of a cliff. I found some iron, one diamond, and plenty of mossy cobblestone. Now hand me 16 pieces of wood."

I obliged, and Author threw them into a square shape, then pulled two chests out of the air and slapped them onto the ground next to each other, where they merged into one.

"Stone and wood on the bottom, everything else at the top."

I opened the chest and deposited my wood, stone, and coal. That's when we heard something strange - a screeching noise.

"What was _that_!?" I snapped, my survival instincts kicking in.

Author slapped down the table she'd made on the first day, then threw iron and sticks into a new formation and pulled out two iron swords. "Cave noise."

"C-cave noise?"

"Yeah. It means there's a large, underground, unlit space somewhere nearby. And -" here she paused, grinned at me, and tossed me a sword - "possibly Herobrine."

"Already?"

She opened the chest and threw a few things into it, then turned to face me and nodded. "I'd wager that your destruction of an entire forest garnered some attention. Look out the window."

I did just that. Everywhere I looked, monsters were popping into sight with a variety of creepy noises.

"See anything unusual?"

"Besides the monsters, you mean?"

"Yeah. Those are normal."

"Are you sure?" I cast a suspicious glance at one of them, a skeleton with glowing green eyes.

"Why, what's wrong with 'em?"

"There's one out there that has eyes the color of...uh...a slightly unripe lime."

"O-o_kay_. That's not normal, but it's not what we're looking for. See anything white and shiny?"

I really wanted to ask the Author about the green-eyed mob, but I also didn't want to get ambushed by Herobrine, so I kept looking.

"Hang on... On the horizon, on top of a mountain, there's a pair of stars that aren't moving with the rest of the sky." I turned back to her. "Think that's him?"

"Let me see," she ordered, then crossed to the door and shoved me aside. "All right, I see the Meteor Mob you mentioned - and no, we don't need to worry about it - and on the mountain... Yup. That's our guy."

I gulped. "Is he going to attack us?"

"Tonight? I don't think so. We might get a cryptic warning though." She crossed back from the door and sat on top of the chest again.

I continued watching from the door. "Uh, Author?"

"Yeah?"

"He's got something glowing in his hand. I think it's an Inferno spell."

"Ah, _fecal matter_. He _is _attacking tonight." (Okay, she didn't actually say 'fecal matter', but I think you can guess the term she really used.)

"What do we do?"

"Nothing."

"_Nothing_!?" I was, at this point, concerned for Author's mental health. "A high-level spirit is attacking and you don't want to do _anything_!?"

"One: We can't really do anything and two: he'll take it as further reason to antagonize us. I went out and got food - hand me stone."

Well, that settled it. My summoner had officially gone nuts.

She glared at me. "_Bartimaeus. _This is critical to our survival. Eight pieces of stone, two pieces of coal, _now or we die_."

I didn't see what the stone and coal was going to do to magically save us, but I obliged and handed her the materials.

Author threw the stone into the same shape that had made the chest, then placed down a furnace and shoved the coal into one end and what looked like uncooked meat in the other.

"How close is he?" she asked, her voice suddenly bubbly.

"Almost here..."

"Get into the mine, okay? Go down just enough so he can't see you."

I nodded. "Fine. You're going to get yourself killed."

She smiled one of those fake smiles that doesn't go up to a person's eyes. "Oh, no I'm not. Not in the least."

* * *

"Hi! Come in! Man, nighttime is savage, isn't it?"

No response.

"You must be low on hunger. I'm cooking some steak right now, would you like some?"

"...No," came the sullen reply. It was definitely Herobrine.

"You sure?"

No response again.

"So! Your skin's really cool. Herobrine, right? Gotta love urban legends."

What was Author even doing? She _knew _it was him; why was she acting clueless?

"I _am _Herobrine."

I could practically hear that sneaky grin of hers in the retort she gave. "_Oh_? So why visit me?"

Herobrine laughed. "Don't think too highly of yourself just yet. I want you out, _magician_."

"Author, actually." Her voice had completely changed - it was cold and reminded me of someone else, someone dangerous. I shivered a little.

"It doesn't matter once you're dead, does it?"

She laughed. "If I die. Which I don't intend to do. Honestly though, one might think you'd be a little more receptive towards help."

There was a long pause before Herobrine spoke again. "By this time tomorrow, you're gone."

"Yeah, yeah." Author's voice was already back to bubbly; I found myself wondering how she'd done the switch so fast. "Offer on the steak still stands, y'know. Have a nice night!"

The door slammed, and everything was eerily quiet for a few minutes until she spoke up again.

"You're good to go, Bunker-man. Come on out."

* * *

**((It's me. Was going to refrain from commenting here, but I couldn't resist. I've been uploading these as they happen/when I have time to write them down.**

**((Aaaaaaanyways, I want to ask you guys something! Do you think I should add my journal entries to this tale, and if so, should they be separate chapters or part of the other chapters?**

**((Please let me know!**

**((Author out... for now.**


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